School Daze: It's put up or shut up time for the Bloomberg administration as kids returned today to a NYC public school system significantly refashioned in Mayor Mike's image. We've all got a lot riding on the success of city schools - a qualified workforce, a future for inner city kids, etc.

Let's hope the school administration, the unions and the parents can make this work. The NYT covers the opening day "chaos" while the Gotham Gazette offers this overview.

Meanwhile, at P.S. 87: "The session at P.S. 87 began with the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer reading excerpts from a children's book that he illustrated, 'Some Things Are Scary.'"

"He forgot: Being a parent on this first day of school must be scary. Especially this year." (via Callalillie)

Here's a statistic you might not know off the top of your head. About 20% of all city kids attend private school, according to another report from Gotham Gazette which cites U.S. Census Bureau data.

"Generally speaking though, the affluent neighborhoods are the ones with the highest private school enrollment, especially in Manhattan. Only 12 percent of students in Harlem (community board 10) attend private school, while on the Upper East Side (community board 8), it is 66 percent."

"Other Manhattan neighborhoods:
Washington Heights - 11 percent
Greenwich Village - 44 percent
East Harlem - 14 percent
Murray Hill - 53 percent
Upper West Side - 39 percent"